


Anguish

by FunnyWings



Series: Codas/Canonverse Fics [16]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: 15.18 coda, 15x18 coda, Angst, Dean's POV, Episode: s15e18 Despair, M/M, Post-Episode: s15e18 Despair, after the confession scene, if you know you know
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-09
Updated: 2020-11-09
Packaged: 2021-03-09 03:27:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,954
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27464179
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FunnyWings/pseuds/FunnyWings
Summary: Dean tries to come to terms with Cas' confession.Excerpt:“Jack was right,” said Dean. “To call up the Empty. Cas had to be happy. Fucker’s never been happy before, go figure.”Sam snorts, a hollow kind of thing. It’s hard to remember that his brother is grieving too. As long as Dean can remember it’s always been a given that even if Cas is (was) a best friend to both of them, he had always been more Dean’s than Sam’s. And fuck, some part of Dean is starting to think he should have seen this coming. Should have known, should have clued in way before Cas got to his cosmic punchline at Dean Winchester’s fucking expense.
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester, Eileen Leahy/Sam Winchester
Series: Codas/Canonverse Fics [16]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2117457
Comments: 37
Kudos: 483





	Anguish

If the world’s a stage, there’s no audience left now.

Everything’s empty. And god that word stings to think, but Dean pushes back the pain and white knuckles the steering wheel as he weaves through abandoned cars loitering on the highway. The whole thing is a death trap, and wouldn’t that just be fitting. Dean Winchester, kills himself not paying attention to the fucking road…

He has to pull over a couple of times. He doesn’t cry, he doesn’t do anything. He just sits there for a few minutes and wills himself to keep driving. And then, miracle of miracles, he does. Sam and Jack are waiting on him. This is how it ends, he guesses. Because it sure does look like everyone else is gone. Everything that made the world worth saving, just… gone.

Jesus Christ, were they gonna fight Chuck for the fucking empty shells of middle American suburbia?

But if it is going to end, he wants it to be with his family. With most of them anyway.

At that thought, he does feel his eyes start to water a little, but they’re long since dry by the time he gets to Sam and Jack.

***

It’s not supposed to come up.

Of course it comes up, how could it not? It’s not like it could escape Sam and Jack’s notice that Cas didn’t make it. Worse, Dean tells the truth (well part of it) and tells them he fucked up with Billie and Cas took her out saving his life by summoning the Empty. He thinks that will be that, and they can move on and fucking die already, but there’s a slight furrow in Jack’s brow. It takes about a millisecond for Dean to break out into a cold sweat because, before Jack even opens his mouth, Dean realizes he knows. About the deal. About what it took for the Empty to come collecting.

“How…?” Jacks asks, and Dean gives him a look. But the kid, he doesn’t get it. He doesn’t shut up. Instead he just keeps talking, and Dean wants to vomit. “I saw him make that deal. He made it for me, and the conditions were specific. He had to be… happy. How could he have just-?”

“Doesn’t matter,” said Dean, talking over the rest of Jack’s sentence. “Cas is gone. We should get gone too. Might be able to outrun Chuck for a few more days.”

Jack tries to say something else, but Sam shakes his head. Jack finally gets the hint. So he frowns a little at the both of them and shuts himself in the back of the Impala. It occurs to Dean the kid probably isn’t doing that well. He just lost his… well, his dad. It should be a sobering reminder for Dean to get his fucking act together, but instead Dean just laughs at the absurdity of it all. It’s all so fucking hysterical.

“Hey,” said Sam, and Dean stops. His brother looks worried. Yeah, well he should be. They’re all gonna die. And the only thing they can do is what they’ve always done. Go down swinging. “Let me drive.”

It’s not a request. Even so, Dean glares at him and sits himself in the driver’s seat, waiting for Sam to get in the car. As soon as he does, they’re off.

Maybe Chuck will just lightning blast them off the road. That might look cool, at least. Not that there will be anyone else around to appreciate it.

***

It’s a few hours of aimless driving before they pull over into a small town to rest a little, and see if they can scrounge up anything to eat. Or well, that was the plan, except as soon as they get into town, Sam assigns Jack to do the scrounging (a dubious choice considering Jack’s tastes were about as refined as a normal three year old). Which leaves Dean and Sam to scoping out a place to hide out for the night, and throwing up whatever warding they think might help.

Not that it helped anyone else.

Still, Dean can tell Sam has another motive. It’s about the seventh time Dean catches Sam looking concerned out of the corner of his eye (as if Dean doesn’t know what this is, as if Sam hasn’t always thrown himself at Dean’s problems so he can avoid his own). But Dean… he doesn’t want to talk about it.

Or he thinks he doesn’t. But somehow it all comes spilling out anyway.

“Jack was right,” said Dean. “To call up the Empty. Cas had to be happy. Fucker’s never been happy before, go figure.”

Sam snorts, a hollow kind of thing. It’s hard to remember that his brother is grieving too. As long as Dean can remember it’s always been a given that even if Cas is (was) a best friend to both of them, he had always been more Dean’s than Sam’s. And fuck, some part of Dean is starting to think he should have seen this coming. Should have known, should have clued in way before Cas got to his cosmic punchline at Dean Winchester’s fucking expense.

“So he said,” Dean starts, but pauses. Because it feels personal, like something Sam shouldn’t hear. Like if all Dean has left of his best friend in the world are these last words, then he needs to hold onto them and keep them safe. Like he owes Cas that much, at least. “He said he figured out what it was he needed to do. And he told me…”

Dean swallows, barely able to get the words out. Sam waits him out, and Dean appreciates that, he does. He would probably appreciate Chuck within pummeling distance more, but that’s neither here nor there.

“He told me he loved me,” he says at last. Sam’s eyebrows go up. He doesn’t look surprised exactly, more… startled. The difference being that Sam isn’t in disbelief that Cas would say something like that, apparently. He just didn’t expect those words to be Cas’ moment of sheer happiness. And really, who fucking would? “That… that just being able to say it was enough.”

Dean looks away from Sam, not wanting to see the expression on his brother’s face. Sam mumbles something or other, something conciliatory. His heart isn’t quite in it, not because he doesn’t care, but because this isn’t the kind of thing that can get his head off of Eileen, off of Donna and Bobby and Charlie, off of everyone fucking else. It’s a reminder.

“Did you know?” Dean asks, when Sam trails off uncertainly. He does look at his brother now, wanting to see his reaction. Sam shifts, uneasy.

“No,” he says, a little hesitantly. “But I mean… it’s Cas.”

“Yeah.”

“He, uh…” Sam says, gauging Dean’s reaction. “I wondered sometimes. If he… But it’s not like he’s human, so I just sorta figured he was just... like that, y’know?”

“Right,” says Dean. He’s not entirely convinced. More than one conversation, more than one instance of Sam saying something that didn’t sit quite right came back to him. He doesn’t bring them up, but those moments seem to hang in the air uncomfortably between them anyway. “He wasn’t ever going to tell me, was he?”

“I don’t think so,” says Sam, letting out a deep breath. “I mean, he never had anyone else, besides us. Not really. And if you took it badly, well... What was he supposed to do?”

“Trust me?” says Dean. “I’m not… Jesus Christ, it’s not like I was gonna hate crime my best friend. Not like I would hate crime anyone, for the record.”

“I know-”

“And what, he just gets to… to dump that on me and never have to deal with what… what I might say back?” Dean asks. Sam is staring at him now, and Dean feels his discomfort deepen.

“Like what?”

“Like fuck you,” says Dean, feeling a little bit of the pain leak out into his voice. “Like… thank you. Like I’m sorry I somehow convinced him I was this great guy worth dying over again and again. That every time he tried to leave, I pulled him right back in. I just… I didn’t know.”

Except even as Dean says that, he doesn’t know if that’s true. Because he did know that from the very beginning Cas stood too close to him, and it wasn’t so much that the guy had stopped as he got more human as it was that Dean stopped minding. He did know that when Cas was between a rock and a hard place, he picked their side, every time. He did know that whenever Cas was gone rogue or dead or just plain off on his own, it felt like he was missing a limb.

He did know that Cas had hit his life like a freight train and nothing had been the same ever since.

“It’s kind of admirable,” says Sam, which lurches Dean out of his thoughts. “I wish… Eileen and I were taking things slow, y’know? After what happened with Chuck, we wanted to make sure. There were so many times I wish I had just… told her how I felt. Everything I felt. I wish the last thing she’d seen was that I loved her, and not me just asking her to fucking wait for us to get there.”

It drains Sam to say it, Dean can tell. And great, now Dean feels bad for feeling conflicted. For not, if nothing else, appreciating that Cas had died happy because the stupid asshole loved him. As if Dean should feel sorry that he would rather have Cas alive and miserable and there at his side, and not just gone. He doesn’t want Cas’ sacrifice, he wants to watch old westerns with him, and make fun of him for being a dork, and know that he has someone he can count on to have his back no matter what.

“Yeah, but that’s different,” he says at last. Sam shrugs, lost in his own hurts for the moment. Not that Dean can blame him.

***

If you had told Dean ten years ago he would be teaming up with the archangel Michael to stop the Apocalypse, you probably would have been a dick angel and Dean probably would have stabbed you. Now, that’s apparently just what’s happening. It’s weird, watching Michael and Adam switch between each other, hearing half a conversation when they’re talking to themselves, seeing a partnership Dean wouldn’t have thought possible about wearing another living being like a suit.

Still, they’ve regrouped and they’ve got a plan going. It isn’t a good one, but what else is there? And it’s good to have one heavy hitter on their side. Would be better if it was Gabriel, who at least seemed to care about more human beings than the one he was currently riding. Well, that last thought came out wrong, but you get the idea.

At some point, Sam and Jack go to look into what spell ingredients they all have at their disposal. Dean doesn’t realize this is going to leave him alone with Michael until it happens. Despite the fact they are temporary allies, Dean feels the hair on his arms stand up as Michael observes him. He can’t forget that other Michael, the one who pushed him aside in his own body and locked him down so deep he almost didn’t resurface.

“What?” Dean says at last. He’s pretty sure this is Michael and not his estranged half brother, right now. Mostly sure. It’s not like he knew Adam for that long though.

“I’m sorry for your loss,” he says. Dean feels himself grit his teeth. Yep. Definitely Michael.

“You hate Cas.”

“Well… a little,” Michael says. “He is part of the reason I spent thousands of years locked in hell with my sadistic brother and a defenseless human who constantly had to be protected from him. I took on a lot of pain because of you three.”

Dean knows Michael didn’t have to protect Adam. Didn’t have to befriend him and care about him when Dean and Sam couldn’t (not because they didn’t want to, but because the world just never stopped ending). It should make him like Michael a little more, that he did that. Maybe it does, maybe it doesn’t. There isn’t enough time left to figure that out, anyway.

“I’d feel more sorry for you if Plan A hadn’t been nuking about half the world in a fratricidal showdown,” says Dean. Michael acknowledges this with a nod. “I went to Hell too, you know? And I didn’t have any friendly faces for company. I didn’t have anyone down there period, until…”

Dean feels his throat close up. So he stops talking and lets Michael fill in the blanks for himself.

“I repeat,” says Michael slowly. “My condolences.”

“Yeah, well,” says Dean. “I’d rather you kept Cas’ name out of your fucking mouth.”

“If you’d prefer.”

***

It’s about an hour until go time when Jack finally musters up whatever it is that compels him to ask Dean again what happened to Cas. Considering they’re all dead if this doesn’t work, and Dean doesn’t really see himself outliving this anyway, Dean tells him the truth. More robotic than how he told Sam. Like it’s just a thing that happened. Like it’s not slowly tearing Dean to shreds from the inside out.

“Oh,” says Jack. Dean thinks that will be that, but Jack’s expression changes. “That… that makes a lot of sense.”

“Good to know,” says Dean, bitterness cutting through every syllable.

“No, I mean,” says Jack. “He was always so confident. That it wasn’t his time. I was always watching him. Always worried. But then bad things kept happening and there was a part of me that hoped he’d never be happy. If it meant he got to stay a little longer. I guess it never occurred to me that he knew. That he was choosing not to go.”

It would be Jack who ripped open everything Dean is trying his damnedest not to think about. It would be Jack who, without even trying, finds the words that hurt the worst. That make Dean realize he can’t just not think about this and hope he dies before it all catches up to him.

“Yeah, but before that,” says Dean. “He… he could have told me.”

Jack blinks at him, and Dean remembers he’s talking to a three year old. Jack is a smart kid, a good kid. But he doesn’t have the life experience to understand why this is the kind of thing you don’t keep to yourself. Because now Dean is questioning everything.

Because now Dean is wondering what the hell it is he feels back.

“Sometimes you keep things to yourself to protect the people who love you,” says Jack, shrugging a little. “That’s why I didn’t tell him I would die to save the world. Not until it was too late to stop it. But I think you’re right. The truth is… better. Harder, but better.”

Dean never really had a best friend. Growing up. Well, there was Lee, but that was… different. And Dean had kinda cut ties and ran after the whole threesome thing, because he hadn’t really known how to talk about it and figured he’d catch up with Lee again some other time. Far in the future. And then Dean had ended up killing him, so add that to the tally of people who were worse off for knowing Dean Winchester.

So when Dean digs, when he really pulls at the thread of hurt and anger and despair, he’s not all that surprised to find love on the other side of it. Of course he cares about Cas. Too much, sometimes. To the point of giving him chance after chance when he fucked up, to the point falling to his knees and begging Cas to be okay, begging someone to make sure Cas was okay, but he just thought… He just thought that’s how it felt. To have a best friend. Because if there had been longing for… for something else. For something more. Well. It was just easier not to think about it. It wasn’t the kind of thing you talked about.

But Cas had, and now Dean was spiralling. Because whatever freedom, whatever happiness Cas bought himself, with that confession, there was nothing like it left. There was just knowing that he’d been lied to again and feeling the hurt of it breaking through him in waves, and knowing the only person he could talk to that would make it all make sense again was fucking dead and it was Dean’s own fucking fault, goddamnit.

“I don’t know what to do with any of this,” says Dean. “I don’t know how to deal.”

Jack pats him lightly on the shoulder, and Dean really is the world’s worst fucking role model, huh?

“I think,” says Jack. “That Cas wouldn’t have held it against you either way.”

“I know,” says Dean. Every word of Cas’ fucking speech felt etched into his head. Every kind fucking word, every piece of his explanation, every pause, every breath. And they just kept playing over and over again, and they weren’t getting any easier to listen to. “That’s the worst part.”

Because Dean knows what Cas doesn’t. And he knows, he’s had a lifetime of knowing, that you don’t get what you want if you don’t fucking ask.

And maybe if he’d bothered he would have liked Dean’s answer. Well, eventually, because the first thing Dean would do would be having this same mental breakdown, but…

Not like it matters. Not anymore.

**Author's Note:**

> It's canon, motherfuckers!
> 
> In all seriousness, I can't believe I posted on my last fic that I wasn't gonna write DeanCas stuff anymore barring very interesting events in the show, and then the show was like: interesting events.
> 
> Anyways, please let me know if you like :)


End file.
